This application generally relates to communications and, more particularly, to prompting systems.
Prompting systems are very popular in today's communications environment. These prompting systems, such as an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, quickly direct a user to a particular department, extension, or information. These prompting systems may even recognize a user and truncate a menu of prompts. Some prompting systems store a user's sequence of responses. Some prompting systems, for example, store a sequence of DTMF inputs. Should the user subsequently interact with the menu of prompts, some prompting systems recall the user's previous inputs and truncate the menu of prompts. The menu of prompts may be truncated to the same destination as the previous call. These prompting systems are thus an efficient and less expensive method of resolving customer inquiries.
While prompting systems are great, current prompting systems do not adequately account for dynamically changing menu trees. Because prompting systems are great for businesses and for customers, the menu of prompts may frequently change to reflect redesigned or new subject matter. This dynamic environment, however, presents problems when truncating the menu. Simply saving a sequence of inputs would not be of benefit in a dynamic menu. A past sequence of inputs may no longer represent a current version of the menu. When a user subsequently interacts with the menu of prompts, the previous sequence may not navigate to the same menu destination. What is needed, then, is a prompting system that may truncate a dynamically changing menu of prompts.